DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

The Tories are shit scared of UKIP, a split vote on the right is the worst possible scenario for them. I don't think that's going to happen though.

I figured out the "neither" button or whatever meant "I don't care." But really, too many questions about Europe, too badly phrased.

Yorkshire First are just jealous that Cornwall got protected minority status and they didn't, so I guess they're going to make a bid for independence next?

do you ever see a newcastle independence party, just out of interest?

There are plenty of good reasons for people on the left to be against the EU but, from a British perspective, they generally assume that we will one day have a government that isn't more right-wing than the current EU consensus.

that's my feeling on the whole

i.e. yes the EU is broadly part of the administrative mechanism of capital but then so is the parliament of the UK and given the essential internationalist nature of socialism devoting yr party to this specific issue seems a bit problematic

I suppose if you are trying to align your cause with other anti-EU parties across Europe, it's still internationalist in some respects. Left-wing Euroscepticism is definitely on the rise in Italy, Greece, Ireland, etc. idk whether NO2EU are more isolationist, though, as i haven't bothered reading the pamphlet either.

there might well be a linking of anti-EU and anti-globalist sentiment in their thinking, on the other hand there's a strain of UK socialism that's been anti-EU from at least the 70s which predates the widespread distrust of globalization. Tony Benn was always agin' it, i've forgotten what the arguments are/were tbh

If you thought you were on the cusp of introducing an egalitarian / socialist government in the 70s, the EU would definitely have been a limiting factor in what you could do with things like industrial subsidy and economic protectionism. Seems rather quaint now.

the goal of the European project as a "single market" (for both goods and labour) has been problematic from a left-wing perspective too, eroding the power of labour as it does

Yeah, I could totally see those arguments against the EU, with the idea that there would be a ~socialist paradise~ in its place.

But the majority of the anti- views I hear expressed seem to boil down either to the common or garden racist "swamped by flocking immigrants" variety or the "OMG, health and safety, labour law, Human Rights are sooooooo draconian and terrible!" flavour, which, on the whole, make me tend to think we should keep it.

Also, the EU provides a great deal of protection and funding for minority languages. Which is obviously going to win brownie points with me.

I dunno; it just seems bizarre, the preponderance given to this particular issue. When another party comes up with a platform which is all "renationalise the railroads!" and gets roundly... ignored. It is just all about the Tories, I guess.

it should be noted that the EU doesn't seem to have had any sizeable impact on national politics when the general election comes round - no UKIP MPs for example. whether that remains the case next year i dunno, but i'm not sure that even then a stronger UKIP showing would represent more people caring deeply about Europe so much as more people wanting the Tory party to be more socially reactionary/aggressively xenophobic

xp the irony is that a lot of the workers rights that the likes of UKIP are seeking to do away with have been guaranteed, if not instigated by, the EU.

yeah, my issues with the EU come from seeing it as free-market-capitalist technocratic superstate experiment – but that never seems to be the argument against, and I like internationalism and human rights etc etc; I'd want to stay in, just, but I'm weirdly close to neutral on something I'm sure is important.

felt like the labour mep complaining about yorkshire first standing for european elections when it's an issue that has to be resolved on a national level is v disingenuous given how hopeless a general election campaign would be for a minor party like that

yeah, but it be "nooh they b takin my votes"

zizek was pretty poor on newsnight last night. I didn't even hear what the third ideal sort of europe that was supposed to be battling for supremacy was, besides the technocratic efficiency one & the xenophobic anxiety one. I'm unclear what the limitations of the former are supposed to be other than the fact it takes global capitalism as a given.

I thought the most rational reason not to be involved in Europe was down to centralisation and preferring to let things be run on a more localised basis, non?

i don't think the size of a political community need have a direct correlation to its centralizing tendencies, there's no reason in principle why the EU can't devolve more powers to its regions than the UK parliament does.

Germany and the US being two examples of states that are properly federalised, of course

I know the term "United States of Europe" is usually brought up as a strawman but it's pretty much what I would like to see.

There's an interesting / impassioned piece in the LRB this week that focuses on the EU and its role in shaping the political scenarios being played out in Italy and Greece at the moment.

The collapse of the Papandreou government ("we're going to have a referendum on austerity" "oh, no you're not") being a prime example of how the will of governments can be railroaded.

I think we have a tendency to view American neoliberal economists as radical ideologues but European ones as broadly benign technocrats, which is just kidding ourselves really.

tbf most of those American economists are either expat Europeans or stans of same

I don't think zizek would argue for devolution or decentralization per se. I suppose you could argue for more serious devolution of powers on a democratic basis - there are issues of representation at different levels - but I can't see how westminster is any better than brussels in this sense except in raw scale. if ppl are in favour of breaking up the UK on those democratic grounds then I can understand their opposition to the EU, good luck to the people's republic of yorkshire &c., but that's not most sceptics' position.

I don't really buy the idea that smaller is better wrt democracy, I agree w/ NV about the lack of necessary correlation between size¢ralization, & I have some faith (or at least interest) in the idea of habermas-style democracy separated from/going beyond the state. large scale democratic projects seem as good a way of structuring the world at a supranational level as we've got. zizek seems to be in favour of european values ~in general~ at the global level but not the EU & mb not democracy, I can't tell.

xxp that's Perry Anderson at his best IMO.

it seems to me that now more than ever there are issues best governed at a global level and then many tiers of potential decision-making below that, right down to individual neighbourhoods/parishes/whatever you like. i guess that's why i find the general nation-state vs EU argument a bit of a sideshow.

UKIP; staying classy, using war dead for anti EU propaganda

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BoCH-JkIAAA1Jvz.jpg

Even if Greece hadn't accepted a bailout from the Eurozone, it could still have chosen to leave the Euro and unilaterally default on its debts, triggering a banking crisis that affected all of Europe and a lot of the rest of the world. Of course, the Eurozone could have bailed Greece out without imposing such obviously damaging austerity measures, or Greece could have taxed its population properly in the first place. Either way it's a myth that in an interconnected global financial system any major decision made by Greece's government *only* affects Greece.

The same goes for Britain, in general the idea of "national sovereignty" that a significant chunk of the right cling to no longer exists and there are negatives and positives to that. A left-wing anti-globalisation critique is if anything *more* consistent and rational than a right-wing one that's largely at odds with the principles of free trade that a lot of yer Farages otherwise claim to support. In the same way that the principles of free trade are at odds with restricting the free movement of people across international borders. All of this is much bigger than the EU.

well said.

this article seems pertinent to the discussion above re. Europe
http://www.thenation.com/article/179851/what-was-democracy?page=full#

Have to admire the gall of the BNP choosing "“Fighting Unsustainable Housing Because We Care”" as their slogan on the ballot paper.

#whyimvotingukip

enjoyed the crazy amounts of far-right parties on the ballot - BNP, Btitain First, UKIP. In something of a quandary because a friend of mine, who I figure was just Tory, voted BNP. Everyone here is military or ex-military, but still. Never been more disappointed in someone. Only one Left party, and that was No2EU, which isn't my scene,

15 candidates here. Hard to tell the difference between the jokers and the anti Europe right wingers.

Plus the BNP are barely a party anymore - if you want to e a fascist you can do it much more efficiently.

xp Also, the ballot paper here was the same width as a toilet roll. Would have made for an interesting 'spoilt ballot'.

funny you say

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/05/21/stop-that-21/

^ our local anti-choice fuckdog candidate

i am having this weird difficulty understanding stats today, i keep seeing tables showing the Labour party (whatever that is) winning more local council seats than anybody else, but right next to these tables there's a load of headlines about how UKIP have destroyed all other political parties and are the runaway success story of yesterday's elections

that's before i ponder what any of this has to do with the business of running local government

It feels like the "UKIP fox is in the Westminster hen house", Nigel Farage has told reporters, after his party won large gains in England's local elections

i mean okay, i know, meaningless fucking farce to lull idiots into a sense of participation, but they're not even pretending any more, this was a vote about WHO PEOPLE WANT TO FIX THEIR FUCKING PAVEMENTS FFS

i am having this weird difficulty understanding stats today, i keep seeing tables showing the Labour party (whatever that is) winning more local council seats than anybody else, but right next to these tables there's a load of headlines about how UKIP have destroyed all other political parties and are the runaway success story of yesterday's elections

glad i'm not the only one perplexed by this.

in the absence of anyone in media caring about the European and local arenas as anything other than midterm reports on real politics this is what you get imo

well yeah precisely, the gamification(?), showbizification(?) of the serious business of making real serious decisions about how the country is governed isn't even pretending to be anything other than sports entertainment for misanthrope spods now

Labour and UKIP have added roughly the same number of seats so far. The idea is that at this stage, with an unpopular government, Labour should be doing much better than they are but their gains are being limited by councils moving from Tory to No Overall Control, partly thanks to UKIP, rather than from Tory to Labour.

But obviously they wouldn't have been able to do this well had the press not dedicated as much time to Farage as every other leader put together.

the stats on the ground are out of all proportion to the tone of some of the headlines, including the BBC's earlier today

a quick Google now looks like a degree of reining back is happening

the local government system is beyond fucked imo

After all that hype, the Lib Dems have ended up with more council seats than Uk*p. All that Farrago hype and hogwash has not worked. So why are the media pretending that it has? Didn’t they learn anything from what happened with Mitt Romney in 2012?

It really does make me feel as if there should be a ten-year moratorium on newspapers and “news” in all forms of media because they are distorting the society in which we are expected to live. I am seriously contemplating whether I should continue living in a country which supposedly doesn’t want me in it. That’s all I hear from the radio, the TV; “foreigners coming in.” And yet this doesn’t remotely relate to what is actually happening. But it distorts the way people are regarded and treated.

Is this always going to be the way with the media – the squeakiest wheel gets the oil, a Good Fucking Story until humanity is wiped out, all that’s worthy of being said is fucking clickbait? Because it’s wearying and stressful, and I need neither of these things in my life. Unless the media really is only run by rich ultra-right wing fuckwits who just want everywhere to be North Korea forever.

xpost yeah, even the guardian's reporting a big backlash against miliband, but the stats say otherwise. Ukip aren't even doing that well. And Greens are gaining a little bit of ground it's nice to see.

I had the same reaction this morning - obviously depressing UKIP have gained so many seats, but it's not that many compared to the hype. My borough's results aren't in yet but neighbouring boroughs all have swings to Labour, Haringey gave the Lib Dems a massive kicking.

OK, Uk*p might do a little better in the Euro elections but tbh I can’t see them getting a landslide of votes, certainly nowhere near as many as they were expecting.

Is this always going to be the way with the media – the squeakiest wheel gets the oil, a Good Fucking Story until humanity is wiped out, all that’s worthy of being said is fucking clickbait? Because it’s wearying and stressful, and I need neither of these things in my life. Unless the media really is only run by rich ultra-right wing fuckwits who just want everywhere to be North Korea forever.

yes.